Interested to know how much less for lower resolutions. I'm not sure I've ever cared for high resolutions - and I'd always pick more battery life given the choice.
this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2025
39 points (89.8% liked)
Linux
8893 readers
594 users here now
A community for everything relating to the GNU/Linux operating system (except the memes!)
Also, check out:
Original icon base courtesy of lewing@isc.tamu.edu and The GIMP
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
As long as the GPU is halfway reasonable the resolution of the video has very little impact on power draw. Most of the power draw is the screen, and the fact that the CPU and GPU are active. That's one of the reasons why Intels core 100 series and up have the LP E cores in a separate tile from the regular E and P cores.
on my laptop (specs wise - consider steam deck non oled, but worse graphics performance, 1080p screen (IPS)) - 5.3-6 Wh for 2x speed playback. for full hd playback 6-7 Wh. Idle power is much higher though 4.5 Wh, on my old laptop, video power consumption consumed similar power, but idle power was close to 2.5-3 Wh (in terms of specs, it had halve the number of cores, and a tn panel)
That is an interesting take. Can I save a lot of battery by choosing 1080 instead of 2/4k for laptops in general? You don't really need 2k for prose text or programming anyway.
Edit: no https://superuser.com/questions/974045/does-changing-the-screen-resolution-affect-power-consumption
Can I save a lot of battery by choosing 1080 instead of 2/4k for laptops in general?
Yes. What your link states is that running a 4k monitor at 1080p won’t save you power (it will, but via gpu, not monitor draw).
A 1080p monitor will require substantially less power than a 4k monitor, all other factors held equal.
I wonder how Asahi on Apple Silicon would do. I would think it would be even less
7 watts on a 13" M1 Macbook Pro (@500 nits vs 400 for the 2.8k framework screen)
@cm0002 ... and the point is?
That is very low power draw for that activity compared to many devices.
I think Macbooks are about half that.
ARM is more power efficient and so are OLED screens so it wouldn’t shock me if the apple silicon macbooks are significantly lower power draw.
Finding a good 1 to 1 comparison is difficult though so I can’t say for sure.
To repost any and all content from a .ml sub, regardless if the needed context is added or not. Because they don’t crosspost properly you can’t see the other comments with the needed context.